The mullahs feel the economic heat

The New Neo Posted on by

The leaders of Iran are feeling the economic pressure exerted by the Trump administration:

The critics of President Trump’s Iran policy have been proven wrong: the US sanctions are imposing significant pressure on the ruling mullahs of Iran and the ability to fund their terror groups.

Before the US Department of Treasury leveled secondary sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas sectors, Tehran was exporting over two million barrel a day of oil. Currently, Tehran’s oil export has gone down to less than 200,000 barrel a day, which represents a decline of roughly 90% in Iran’s oil exports.

…Speaking in the city of Kerman on November 12, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani acknowledged for the first time that “Iran is experiencing one of its hardest years since the 1979 Islamic revolution” and that “the country’s situation is not normal.”

Rouhani also complained: “Although we have some other incomes, the only revenue that can keep the country going is the oil money. We have never had so many problems in selling oil.”…

Thanks to the US policy of “maximum pressure,” the Islamic Republic’s overall economy has taken a major beating as well. Lately, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has again adjusted its forecast for Iran’s economy and pointed out that Iran’s economy is expected to shrink by 9.5% rather than 6% by the end of 2019.

One of the reasons behind IMF’s gloomy picture of Iran’s economy is linked to the Trump administration’s decision not to extend its waiver for Iran’s eight biggest oil buyers; China, India, Greece, Italy, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey and South Korea.

This is, of course, in contrast to the policies of the Obama administration.

You may have heard about increasing demonstrations in Iran recently, and a crackdown by authorities that has left over 100 people dead. There is a connection:

The deadly drama playing out in Iran since last Friday, leaving more than 100 protesters dead, shows three things. Tehran is increasingly in desperate economic straits, in part because of intense U.S. sanctions; Iranian popular discontent with the regime’s economic mismanagement seems to have reached a breaking point; and the regime is more frightened of popular unrest than at any time in recent years.

The latest explosion of popular protest in Iran began on Friday after the government rescinded fuel subsidies, which essentially tripled the price of gasoline—a painful blow to millions of ordinary Iranians already struggling to survive a debased currency, high unemployment, and a shrinking economy. But the demonstrations that began over fuel subsidies quickly became a sweeping, nationwide protest against the Iranian regime itself, with outbreaks in dozens of cities in every Iranian province, targeting especially government buildings such as police stations and state-owned banks.

The government’s response has been much more brutal than in previous outbreaks of protest, such as in 2017-2018, including a near-total shutdown of the internet and unrestrained use of violence by security forces. Groups including Amnesty International have documented at least 106 deaths during the protests, as regime security forces have used live ammunition to target demonstrators. The brutal crackdown is both evidence of the regime’s desperation at its own inability to sway popular opinion and a result of watching weeks of similar deadly protests (also directed against Iran) in Iraq and Lebanon…

… Since U.S. President Donald Trump reimposed sweeping sanctions on Iran’s economy, including the ban on oil sales, Iran’s economy has been in a free fall.

Is there any chance the government of Iran could fall? A regime willing to kill demonstrators is demonstrating both power and weakness. Ruthless measures can reach a point of diminishing returns if the number of protestors becomes huge, and a particular turning point tends to be if and when the security forces of police and military decide to turn on the regime and side with the demonstrators. Then all bets are off.

It doesn’t seem that Iran is anywhere near that point. But when it happens, it can happen suddenly and unexpectedly.

Fighting back

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: It always amuses me (in a bleak sort of way) when I read liberal or left-wing sites where people are complaining that the Democrats don’t fight dirty enough. This is generally accompanied by the claim that it’s the Republicans who fight, and who fight dirty, and that the Democrats must finally start to rise above (or perhaps the proper word would be “below”) their previous nobility – to finally “take the gloves off” – in order to fight against the right effectively and win.

And of course, the right says the same in reverse: that it’s the left that fights hard and dirty, and that a great many Republicans have been reluctant to fight at all. I happen to think that is closer to a description of reality, and that it’s extremely obvious that this is so – or at least, that it was so until Trump became president.]

Commenter “KyndyllG” writes:

…[P]art of me longs to live in a world where you can explain things, using facts and reason, to the opposing party and get results.

Long before I got into politics, I found that it’s very difficult to move someone from something they believe. They don’t believe it because of facts and reason, and facts and reason alone are very unlikely to change their beliefs. Experience to the contrary of those precious beliefs is almost the only thing that works – a wakeup call that makes someone question something they’ve always believed and assumed to be right. And even that doesn’t apply to ideologues, like hardcore leftists, because they either shift the blame for contrary outcomes (eg, blaming conservatives for the failure of Obamacare) or simply because they are so sure that they are pursuing an ultimate rightness that it doesn’t even matter how much fails or is broken along the way.

As radical far left as the Democrat party itself has become, led by emboldened radicals and populated by normies staring at their shoes at the craziness but still voting D every time, good luck with “explaining” why our position is better. We are way past the point of “explaining.” We are at survival-of-the-Republic times. I know that there are NTs [NeverTrumpers] who in their heart would rather be dead than sullied, but the rest of us are not ready to die (figuratively or even literally) because you don’t want to get your hands dirty while fighting with vile people that have no standards at all.

That’s a good summation of a lot of things that have been discussed on this blog before. One of them is how difficult it is to change other people’s minds – or even to change one’s own. I’ve devoted this series and many of the posts in this category as well as this one to that topic, and I heartily concur with KyndyllG’s assessment of the difficulty and rarity of change.

I also agree that reasoning alone doesn’t cut it for most people, because there are huge – and I mean huge – emotional drivers of political opinion as well as political identity. And yet change does occur, and there are also those voters who actually do alternate between voting for one party and voting for the other. Whatever captures them tends to matter a lot, because of how evenly the divided the nation has been for a while.

The perennial question is: how low do you go? Those on the right who despise Trump feel he goes too low. Others who are sometimes offended by his approach nevertheless support him because of other things they like about him or because – and here’s the part that’s especially relevant in this post – they think his form of “dirty” fighting doesn’t cross any verboten line and is effective and perhaps even necessary at this stage.

The larger question, and one on which people differ greatly, is where to draw the line. At what point does the end not justify the means? At what point does a group of people fighting against an opposition that plays dirty become the very thing they hate? We all know that tyrannies and tyrants tend to justify the evil they do by saying they’re fighting for good and fighting an even more evil opposition, so how does one know when a line has been crossed?

Real tyrants probably don’t ask themselves that question; they don’t care. Or they decide there is no line they will not cross in order to make those tasty omelets.

My own answer (and it’s not a perfect one by any means) is that our Founders were well aware of the problem, and devised a constitution to try to make it difficult for a tyranny to take hold. Difficult, but not impossible. To avoid tyranny, try to focus on process, and keep to the standards outlined there. Pay particular attention to liberty, and you can fight hard (and even nastily at times) without crossing the line.

Last night’s Democratic debate

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t watch it.

But I hear tell about it. See a whole bunch of links here, and also see this.

I think that much of the country isn’t watching, even Democrats. It’s early, it’s confusing, it’s boring, and there are too many candidates.

I was recently talking with two liberals and I asked them which one of the candidates each of them favored. They both looked at me blankly for a long time, sighed, and confessed that the answer for them was “no one.”

And yet their hatred of Trump is so intense that I have no doubt that anyone – and I mean that literally: anyone – the Democratic Party ends up nominating is the person for whom these two people will be voting, with vigor.

“Shakespeare who?” ask Canadian students

The New Neo Posted on by

The greatest English writer who ever lived is a dead white man, and so several school districts in Canada have decided to disappear him:

The Greater Essex County District School Board in the Windsor, Ont., area is supplanting its grade 11 literature curriculum, which up to now has featured great writers of the western canon such as Shakespeare and George Orwell, with a year-long program of Indigenous writers. The change has already been effected in eight of the district’s 15 schools.

In the Peel district as well, I am informed by a reader, the same transformation is in progress. It would be naïve to assume that these schools will remain anomalies for long. The “disappearing” of dead white European male writers, however magnificent their achievements, may well be normalized across Canada before long.

And it also seems appropriately ironic that Orwell – who knew all too well the ways in which oppressive states seek to “disappear” unapproved people and their works – is going down the Canadian memory hole himself.

What is replacing Shakespeare the genius? Contemporary indigenous novels such as this one which focuses on the cruelty that was perpetrated on the Indians of Canada (Native Canadians?):

As a response to Truth and Reconciliation Commision, the public school board’s trustees passed a motion in 2016 to develop an Indigenous education protocol in response to calls for action.

Since this decision, eight of 15 high schools have replaced Grade 11 English course materials with Indigenous books including Indian Horse, In this Together and Seven Fallen Feathers.

The new course is called Understanding Contemporary First Nations, Métis and Inuit Voices.

So instead of learning the pearls of the Western canon, students in these districts are to remain ignorant of those achievements in favor of the study of literature that I think we can safely predict will not stand the test of time but will nevertheless serve the new overriding pedagogical goal of making the majority of students feel guilty about themselves and their culture.

More on NeverTrumpers

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Eva Marie” offers this explanation for the motives and concerns of NeverTrumpers:

Maybe they think of conservatism as essentially a lost cause. Maybe they think of it as that last bit of shelter from the vulgarity and crassness that is destined to seep into every part of our lives. And even though politicians like Bob Dole, Bush 1 and 2 eventually failed, they maintained a standard of behavior that heartened [them]. Switching metaphors, even though we are destined to go down with the ship we will do so as gentlemen and gentleladies. And here comes Trump. He thinks he can save the ship. He’s a fool for thinking so and we are fools for supporting him. Not only will the ship sink anyway but we will have been reduced to behaving just like the Democrats – we won’t even have the comfort of believing that we are not like them.

I wouldn’t doubt that’s what goes on with some NeverTrumpers. If all is lost anyway, why not maintain one’s dignity?

I have no idea how common that feeling is. But I don’t share it. All may be lost, but I see no reason to assume that and to give up. Meanwhile, if the ship is temporarily captained by someone who wasn’t sent by Central Casting, I don’t mind his crass style if he can steer away from the shoals and avoid a wreck. I would love for someone to come along who combines every quality I admire – eloquence, dignity, wisdom, strength, courage, foresight. But I’m not waiting around for such a paragon to appear, nor for Godot.

I didn’t start out supporting Trump, particularly during the primaries, as anyone who read my blog at the time could instantly perceive. But my objections were not especially about his style; they were about my distrust of him and what he planned to accomplish. Once he was elected, I was more than willing to give him a chance, and in terms of actions he’s exceeded my expectations tremendously as president. Even in terms of style he hasn’t been as bad as I expected, so on the whole I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

That experience obviously runs counter to the perceptions a NeverTrumper has of the Trump presidency so far. By the way, I define the term “NeverTrumper” this way: a person who claims to be on the right and who detests Trump and his ways so much that nothing the man does gets that person’s approval, and who in most cases is now actively hoping for impeachment or for the election of whatever candidate the Democrats nominate in 2020 to oppose Trump.

We have crossed the border into a place where the words “man” and “woman” have no biological meaning

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m talking about this sort of thing:

One of the many goals of the left is for the words “man” and “woman” to have no biological meaning or reality whatsoever, but to be entirely socially constructed. As Orwell knew, tearing down the traditional use of words is a powerful tool, as the left is acutely aware.

Those 27 mass shooters and fatherlessness

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed a number of people in this thread who cited a reported statistic about fatherlessness and mass shootings, which is that 26 of the shooters in the 27 deadliest mass shootings in the US grew up fatherless.

I’ve written about that assertion before, here. And while I have no doubt that the presence of a father is highly important and ordinarily beneficial for children, and the absence of a father is often highly detrimental, I beg to differ with that “26 of 27” statistic which appears to be based partly on this article.

The list of 27 can be found here. Let’s take them one by one. Continue reading →

Gentlemen and gentlewomen vs. Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the things that often strikes me is that Trump is no gentleman.

Oh, he can be a gentleman. When he wants to, he can act as graciously as anyone and exhibit excellent manners. But that’s not his usual mode, particularly with people in US politics whom he disdains or considers to be outright enemies or rivals.

Other presidents have behaved that way, too – in private. LBJ comes immediately to mind, as well as Nixon. In fact, it may be somewhat true of all presidents. But they have generally been careful – at least, the ones who have been president during my lifetime – not to display that particular side of themselves to the public at large (although Obama exhibited it once or twice in gestures for the cognoscenti to interpret).

One of the hallmarks of this lack of gentlemanly behavior on the part of the public Trump is his tendency to give people nasty nicknames. Nasty and yet effective, for the most part. These nicknames often involve a level of taunting reminiscent of the schoolyard, the locker room, or the pro wrestling circuit, and involve (among many many other things) insults regarding diminutive size.

That sort of ungentlemanly behavior as well as other examples in that vein drives Trump-haters on the right nearly crazy. The left hates him for that reason, too, but they hate so much else about him that their hatred about his lack of gentlemanliness is mostly because of its effectiveness. If he fought on behalf of their side, they’d love it.

Whereas those on the right who hate Trump for his lack of gentlemanliness hate it because they don’t want his déclassé ways to rub off on them. They don’t care that he has fought for policies and judges they profess to admire. Simply put, they consider him embarrassing riffraff and they don’t want to be tainted by association.

Many Trump supporters like him because he fights. He fights for them and he fights for America. And some of the time he doesn’t fight like a gentleman. That’s the same thing that a lot of Republicans who detest Trump really really really dislike.

I’ve probably written over a hundred posts on the topic of “why they hate Trump.” I may write a great many more. It’s an almost inexhaustible topic, isn’t it?

University students have increasing emotional problems

The New Neo Posted on by

This isn’t going to be a post bashing college students for being fragile flowers. It’s true they are more fragile than they used to be, but here’s a serious discussion in The Guardian, of all places, about the phenomenon.

Reading it, I felt a sense of sadness and came to the conclusion that today’s students are not being served by anyone very well. Politicians and the universities themselves have pushed the idea that just about everyone should go to college, and that means that people are attending who struggle with the work and remain highly stressed. It doesn’t help that secondary schools generally do much less to properly prepare them than they used to. Then there are the enormous student loans that result from a pact between government and universities, and allow students to attend while mortgaging their future earning power, all for a piece of paper that doesn’t reliably offer them a job payoff after school and yet is considered obligatory to get so many of today’s jobs. The family is much less of an emotional bulwark than it used to be, and that means a lot of students come to school with pre-existant emotional difficulties that are exacerbated by the stress of the workthere.

The article doesn’t mention it, but I bet substance abuse is part of it for increasing numbers of students, too. And of course there’s social media, which seems to do more harm than good and offers an illusory closeness and interaction, a forum for bullying, and impossible standards with which to compare oneself. Lastly (unmentioned by the article too) is hookup culture, which beckons and seduces but doesn’t fulfill. And especially for men, there is the fear of being falsely accused.

There’s probably more, but that’s enough for now. No wonder the suicide rate is up among university students.

[NOTE: The piece is about students in the UK, but I think most of it applies here, too. In the UK in particular, there aren’t enough funds for adequate mental health services at colleges, and waiting lists are long. I’m not sure that part is true in the US – yet.]